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This recipe has you make a basic (but delicious) brown sugar based dry rub, coat the bacon strips in it, wrap the bacon on the wing sections, pin it in place with water soaked wooden toothpicks and cook in the air fryer to perfection.

This recipe is optimized for a 5.8 qt air fryer.

Happy International Bacon Day!

Ingredients

12 wing sections (thawed)

12 pieces thin cut bacon

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp smoked paprika

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp chili powder

wooden toothpicks (briefly soaked in water)

Instructions

Place fresh (thawed) wing sections on a plate, pat dry if you’d like.

Set bacon on a plate and peel apart the strips so they’re all separate.

Take the dry ingredients and whisk together in a bowl.

Put at least 12 toothpicks in a small bowl and soak in water while you’re doing this next bit. I used more because I have flat toothpicks, and they’re not as strong as round so some of them would bend when inserting through bacon. Soak them in water so they don’t char or burn in the air fryer.

Put the dry rub in a gallon sized ziplock bag, dump in the loose bacon and shake vigorously, working that brown sugar and seasonings into the bacon. Pull bacon out of the bag and dump onto a plate.

Now, one at a time, grab a wing section, start a piece of bacon at one end, and wrap around to the other end overlapping by however much you need to get the bacon to the end. Try to overlap if you can to help the bacon placed at the start stay in place.

Pin the bacon in place at the end with a wet toothpick and place on a baking sheet (or other convenient easy-to-clean flat surface).

Set your air fryer to preheat at 400 F for 5 minutes. I preheated this because you want that bacon on the bottom of the basket to start sizzling right away. You want to waste NO time getting that bacon going.

Once the air fryer is done preheating, place your wings carefully in the basket, trying very hard not to overcrowd. With this recipe, air flow is extremely important top and bottom. I’ve only got 12 wing sections in this batch because there just wasn’t quite enough room for the usual 14 once the bacon was on them.

Cook the wings for 25 minutes at 380 F.

In this batch I did NOT flip them at all. Usually I would flip wings halfway through.

My concern was, I’ve noticed that flipping over wings done with a dry rub can take a crispy top and, by flipping it to the bottom, cause juices to soak into and soften it. I wanted the bacon good and tight on top so I left it unflipped.

Once cooked, I did notice the top was perfectly well done and crispy. The color might be darker than you first expect because of the caramelization of the brown sugar dry rub.

The very bottoms were a little softer/wetter, but were NOT underdone, rubbery or at all bad. Just a touch softer and juicier. In the end, you can try flipping but if you do, I’d go a quarter turn instead of all the way over. Give the juices a chance to drain straight down without wetting the crispy side.

Pull out the toothpicks and plate.

Done!

Important Notice

My wife would like to make it clear that she thinks this whole recipe is just ridiculous for one person to eat for lunch.

Ingredients

Instructions

Place fresh (thawed) wing sections directly in the air fryer basket. No seasoning, no oil.

Set air fryer to cook wings for 20 minutes at 370 F.

While waiting for the ten minute mark to flip the wings, gather your sauce ingredients and prepare a small skillet, a whisk, a mixing spoon and a medium sized bowl for use.

In the cold skillet, whisk the corn starch and soy sauce together until completely smooth.

With the skillet still cold, add the other ingredients to the soy sauce and whisk until well blended.

At ten minutes, flip the wings over and resume cooking. With about three minutes left to go, set the skillet on a medium heat burner and whisk continuously while the sauce comes up to a simmer.

When the wings reach 20 minutes, give the basket a good shake, spread the wings out evenly, and set the air fryer to 400 F, cook time 4 minutes.

Continue to simmer the sauce (bubbling and thick) whisking constantly for the four minutes until the wings are done.

Dump wings in a bowl, pour sauce on top, stir with a spoon until completely coated.

Done!

More Detailed Instructions (but not much)

Place a half flat of thawed wing sections in the basket of the air fryer. You don’t need any oil as long as your basket is non-stick, because we’re not trying to protect a flour or seasoning coating from coming off. The natural juices of the cooking wings will keep them from sticking.

Set the air fryer to cook for 20 minutes at 370 F. This will get them cooked almost all the way through while not burning the outsides. We’ll crank it up to 400 F for another 4 minutes at the end, just to get the skin good and crispy to hold up to the sauce.

While the wings are cooking, assemble your sauce ingredients.

Now, I use sambal oelek for the chili part of the sweet chili sauce. You could use sriracha if you’d like, sriracha is already at a smooth consistency and has much of the same flavors. You could use it instead of sambal oelek right out of the bottle. The reason I don’t is that sriracha already has it’s own sweetness from sugar and has a few underlying flavors I’m not a big fan of. Personal preference only. I prefer the richness of sambal oelek… but it’s a more chunky chili paste, and I don’t like the consistency in a sauce. So when I open a new jar of sambal oelek, I run it through the blender for a few minutes to blend it smooth, then it’s already smooth when I need to grab a few tablespoons later.

I also buy ginger and garlic paste to keep in the refrigerator. And jars of minced garlic, too. I make, damn, a lot of wings and many of my sauces call for ginger and garlic. After a while, I just got tired of always mincing or smoothing ginger root or garlic cloves into a paste when I could just grab a tube and squeeze out what I need in two seconds without cleaning a garlic press later. Do I recommend you do this? Depends on how lazy you are, and how long yours would sit in the refrigerator. I don’t know how long tubes or jars of garlic or ginger last, because it’s not around long enough for me to find out. I haven’t had any issues with the flavors or cooking with it, so I honestly can’t see why not to use them. I kinda suspect using all fresh everything is slightly pretentious when there are some alternatives, but I’m not a chef OR a cook, so what the heck do I know. Maybe I’m committing some horrible cooking sin. Wings still taste great though.

Once the wings are a few minutes out, get your sauce simmering, good slow thick bubbles while you whisk constantly over medium heat. Overall, you’ll just be cooking the sauce about 6 or 7 minutes, simmering all the while. Should end up pretty thick and sticky.

Now, this sauce is pretty darn tasty on other things, like chicken nuggets, or even tonkatsu or chicken katsu instead of Bulldog katsu sauce, even on top of tacos. If you want to make more sauce and save some of it for later, just DO NOT ADD CORN STARCH and when it’s done cooking, pour and save the extra sauce in a jar and keep in the fridge. Should stay good for at least a week if you keep it refrigerated until you’re ready to use it. I’d advise warming it up instead of using it cold, though.

If you do that, AFTER you pour off your extra sauce, put the two teaspoons of corn starch in a small bowl by itself with some cold water, enough to whisk it until blended, and then add that to the sauce in the pan and simmer until thickened. That way you get your sticky sauce now and have your normal sauce to save in the fridge for later.

After 4 minutes at 400 F, the wings will be reasonably crispy. Just right for spinning in this sauce.

Place the wings in a bowl, dump your sauce on top, and swirl them around with a mixing spoon until well coated.

Any mixing spoon will do, even the burned wooden one I left on the stove top a little too long.

That’s it, ready to eat.

These are sweet but have a pretty solid kick to them. It’s only two tablespoons of sambal oelek, but don’t underestimate the power of that plus ginger. The best part is, the heat doesn’t linger. It’s sweet and hot right up front, then tapers off very quick with almost NO residual, lingering burn at all. It’s just right if you want to chow down on wings and feel the burn but don’t want to still have a burning mouth 15 minutes later.

I really like this one, I don’t make it them as often because it’s more involved than my dry rub wings.

I’ll be gone next weekend, so it’ll be two weeks until my next wing recipe, either sweet and sour wings or my dry rub. Or both, lol.

If you make these, let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions for tweaks, okay?

Instructions

Dump seasoned flour in ziplock. Close ziplock and shake well, getting all the chicken coated.

Spray light coat of vegetable oil in bottom of air fryer basket.

Using tongs, pick wing sections out of bag, shake off excess flour, and lay in basket, doing your best to keep them to one layer and touching as little as possible.

Spray a light coat of vegetable oil on the top of the wings in the basket. You do NOT have to flip them or spray the other side right now. You just want the flour moistened on top a bit before cooking.

Cook the wings for 20 minutes at 370 F, flipping them over at the halfway point and spraying vegetable oil VERY lightly on any dry spots.

Once the wings have cooked for 20 minutes, using a basting brush, LIGHTLY baste your choice of BBQ sauce on the top side of the wings. This moistens any flour that remains a little dry. The thicker the sauce is, the less likely it will be a beautiful caramelized glaze, so go light.

Cook wings BBQ sauce side up for 2 minutes at 400 F.

Flip wings over, baste with BBQ sauce, again going lightly and making sure any dry patches of flour are moistened. Cook at 400 F for 2 minutes.

Done!

More detailed instructions

Place the wing sections in a ziplock bag. Mine are already in one, because that is how I store them after breaking down a flat from the supermarket. I do not pat them dry, having them be slightly damp helps the flour adhere AND cook.

In a small bowl, dump the flour, salt, pepper and paprika, and whisk so it’s very well blended. I use a lot of paprika, because I like that heat underlying whatever sauce I use, which to be honest is whatever I have a partial of lying around. From the cheap generic BBQ sauce from Aldi’s to something nicer like a Sweet Baby Ray’s, any glaze can go over the base wings. If you don’t care for it being too spicy, you can reduce or leave out the paprika entirely. I do not season this chicken directly because the seasoned flour does a very nice job of staying on the chicken.

Dump the seasoned flour right in your chicken bag, seal up with an air pocket trapped inside, and shake the heck out of it, moving the chicken pieces around so everything gets nicely coated.

Now spray vegetable oil in the bottom of your air fryer basket to give it a nice light coating. This prevents sticking, helps prevent losing flour coating off the chicken bottoms, and also helps moisten the chicken bottoms as it cooks the first 10 minutes.

Pick out chicken wing sections from the bag with tongs, shaking all the excess flour off of them. The thicker your flour is, the gummier it will likely be. A nice thin coating will crisp up well.

Lay the wings as carefully as you can in the basket, keeping it to one layer and trying not to crowd it. The whole point is to have that hot air blasting every bit of surface area it can reach. That is why I don’t use paper liners or second level trays or anything else in the basket. You want as much air flow as you can get.

I’m actually not too happy with this. It’s crowding a lot, but that’s because this half flat of wings was very fresh and plump, lot more meat than usual. I know, terrible problem, too much yummy chicken, how horrible. It’s okay, it turned out fine. The chicken does firm up and shrink a little while cooking.

Spray the TOP of the floured wings with more vegetable spray. A very light spray, if you have a mister that works with vegetable oil that’s even better. You just want the flour to be slightly moist, not soaked. Remember, as the chicken cooks, natural fat and juices will be released that self-moistens the flour, more on the bottom than the top.

This is what mine looked like after spraying the top. You can see there are still dry patches of flour, because I’d rather go light on oil. Later on, you will be lightly basting BBQ sauce on the wings and that will moisten any dry patches.

Okay. Time to cook. Put the basket in and cook the wings for 20 minutes at 370 F. At the ten minute point, you’ll flip the wings over. Spray any super dry patches very, very lightly with oil.

You can see, even here at the halfway point they’re looking like they’re getting nice and golden brown.

Finish cooking the remaining 20 minutes.

Get your BBQ sauce of choice and a basting brush ready.

After the 20 minutes of cooking are over, it’s time to get the glaze on and caramelized. Baste the tops of the chicken lightly with your BBQ sauce. You shouldn’t need that much, because you want a thin coating. It’ll caramelize under high heat without losing the crispiness you just built up with the flour. If you use too much sauce, it’s not a bad thing, but the wings will be more towards the sticky side.

There, that is the top side sauced prior to cooking.

Cook that top side at 400 F for 2 minutes. You’re looking for high heat to caramelize the glaze.

At the end of two minutes, pull the basket out, flip the wings over and baste the bottoms, and cook for another 2 minutes at 400 F.

Done! Overall cooking time 24 minutes at no less than 370 F. Even with these super thick and juicy wing sections, they were cooked thoroughly all the way to the bones.

Last thoughts. This time (as shown in this picture) I did NOT cook them at 400 F for the last four minutes. I cooked them at 370 F because, as I mentioned in the previous Tips blog post, my air fryer does not like cooking at 400 F. The control panel goes wonky. So this time I tried it staying at 370 F just to see how they would turn out. As you can see from the picture, they are NOT all beautifully caramelized. They’re more on the crispy/sticky side. Still darn yummy, but not quite how they usually turn out.

I do this all the time, every batch of wings I make I’m trying something different, just to see what happens. The only hard and fast rule is to always make sure you cook the wings through. Never risk eating under-cooked chicken. But if you want to try more or less salt or pepper in the flour, add some cayenne pepper, use Heinz 57 sauce for your glaze instead of BBQ or maybe even some tikka masala, go for it. Worse that happens is that you’re eating wings that aren’t quite what you were expecting, and that’s never that bad a thing.

A few friends suggested I write some blog posts sharing my recipes for Air Fryer Chicken Wings. Since I’ve been making them several times a week (many different flavors and styles), I figured that might be fun.

Before I do recipe posts, I wanted to do one quick tips and tools post, so I’m not repeating myself in the recipes. That’s what I’m going to cover here.

Air Fryers

I strongly suggest the minimum size of Air Fryer you get be a 5.3 quart. When cooking wings, you want an air fryer basket where you can lay out your wing sections with a little room for the air to flow evenly around them.

A ‘flat’ of wings, at least here in Minnesota, is 14 full wings which comes out to 28 wing sections when cut up and the tips thrown away. A 5.3/5.8 quart air fryer basket can comfortably fit one half of a flat, or 7 wings/14 wing sections.

Why do I mention 5.3 and 5.8 quarts side by side? Because choosing what exact size of air fryer you’re getting can be a bit tricky. Different air fryer manufacturers in the 5 quart plus range, can actually have the same size baskets, but the manufacturer measured from different points corner to corner to get the volume.

Example. I have a Bella Pro Series “5.3 qt” air fryer. I have seven friends that all bought the Cosori 5.8 qt air fryer. Both of these air fryers have the EXACT SAME SIZE BASKET when placed size by side. Identical and interchangeable. So, don’t get too hung up on dimensions when shopping. Once you’re looking in the 5-ish qt range of air fryer, they’re pretty close to each other in size.

Now, like I said I have a Bella Pro Series 5.3 quart air fryer I bought from Best Buy. I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT. It gets the job done well enough that I haven’t replaced it, but it has a recurring fault in the control panel. If I set it to cook at 400 F, after five or ten minutes the control panel begins going nuts, changing the temperature or cook time on it’s own from minimum to maximum levels, sometimes even shutting itself off. Best I can figure the control panel isn’t well enough insulated from the heating coil at that temperature. I haven’t had any issues cooking at 360 to 370 F, so I just deal with it because my results at those temperatures are fine.

The way it worked out, we have that one guy in our shop, you know the type. Before he buys anything, he researches them for about a month. He finally decided on the Cosori, bought it, and raved about it enough that everyone else in the shop and out in the manufacturing plant started buying them. Now we have wing cook-off days at the shop where we all bring in our air fryers and cook a flat of wings with our own recipes, and share to see who likes what the most. That’s how I know that my Bella basket is in ALL ways interchangeable with the Cosori… but the controls and features on the Cosori are better, and the control panel design is different, and most important of all, none of them have had any issues with their units. So, hey, when I get a new one I’ll be getting a Cosori as well.

Wings

When buying wings, only you can decide what importance you place on quality, convenience or price. Organic? Free range? Your choice.

I personally do not worry too much about anything except getting the best quality wing I can for the most reasonable price. That is why instead of going to a butcher (good but expensive) I go to the local supermarket and buy fresh whole wings instead of frozen, and break them down myself. I do recommend breaking whole wings down, because the wings are easier to eat, they cook more evenly, and you get rid of the wing tips which can be a pain to work around when arranges wings in the air fryer basket.

In Minnesota, the supermarkets carry flats of fresh wings, 14 whole wings with tips. Once you break them down you’re left with 28 wing sections and discarded tips.

You can also sometimes find smaller packages of fresh wings, usually 8 or 10 to a package, again whole.

If shopping for convenience, then you can find packages of frozen wings, already cut up and sectioned without wing tips, ‘ready to cook’ in 4 lb, 8 lb or larger packs.

In my experience, the fresh wings will be larger, meatier than the frozen, often just a better quality wing, and yet at the same time being less expensive than frozen.

With frozen sectioned wings you are paying more for the convenience of having the wings already cut up for you and frozen for long term storage.

Here is an example of the price breakdown I found for wings just this weekend;

Walmart frozen 8 lb Tyson frozen wing sections – $3.14/lb on sale.

Walmart frozen 8 lb generic frozen wing sections – $2.48/lb.

Walmart fresh Purdue whole wings – $2.27/lb.

Aldi’s fresh whole wings – $1.79/lb on sale, normally $1.99/lb.

That’s a pretty big swing in price. The price for a 4 lb pack of frozen wing sections is even higher, because they charge you more for getting a smaller package. I don’t know why, but there you go.

Now, of these different options, I looked very carefully at all the wings. Of them all, the fresh Aldi’s wings were by far the best in size and apparent freshness. For a flat of 14 wings, they were a full pound more meat than the flat of fresh Purdue wings. The Purdue wings I got were 3.9 lbs, the Alsi’d were 4.9 lbs. Same number of wings, a pound more meat.

Even then, both the frozen wing packages I checked had smaller wing sections compared to the Purdue.

That’s why I recommend buying a flat of fresh whole wings and breaking them down yourself. You’ll get the best price while at the same time getting better quality.

I typically buy one flat of fresh wings a week, break them down and split them up into two freezer bags, 14 wing sections per bag. 14 wing sections fits perfectly in a basket for a 5.3 quart air fryer in one go, so I’ll make wings Saturday and Sunday, trying different recipes each time.

If you’ve never broken wings down before, it’s extremely easy once you’ve tried. Here is a good video that you may find helpful if you haven’t done it before.

Tools

Make sure you have a nice sharp knife, it makes breaking down the wings a snap. The one I use we’ve had for decades, but sharpening it makes the job easy. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just strong and sharp and a good weight to get the job done.

I’ve also found a good set of spring loaded tongs is perfect for handling the wings in the basket when it comes time to flip them over. I got the pair in this picture for about $12 at Kohl’s, nothing super special, but perfect for the task at hand.

Tips

I don’t pre-heat my air fryer. My model (and the Cosori) both come up to temp fast enough that pre-heating doesn’t seem to add anything to the party.

When I use oil, I buy cans of vegetable oil cooking spray. It seems that these days you can purchase the cooking sprays with actual vegetable oil, olive oil, or many other types of oil which is really nice. It’s not just the old scary generic ‘butter cooking spray’ that used to make me wonder what the hell you were getting in that can.

I would prefer to have a spray bottle / mister of peanut oil to use when spraying the wings in the basket, but so far I’ve tested a few misting bottles, and none of them handle the peanut oil well. Instead of misting, it comes out as a stream. So I’ll keep trying different bottles until I find one that can mist a slippery peanut oil type fluid.

When buying spices, paprika in particular, there are different kinds and where you buy them, how fresh they are, and what kind play a big role in your flavors.

When I say paprika in my recipes, I’ll always mean the standard generic paprika you can get in a little McCormicks bottle.

If you’d like to try something special, find some smoked paprika, or for a sweeter flavor some Hungarian paprika. They have the same underlying flavor profiles as standard paprika, but are very different in the smoky or sweet notes they add to the dish.

Also, when recipes call for black pepper, if you’d like to see what a hit of citrus would do to the seasoning try some lemon pepper. If you’re not used to it, you might be amazed at how the lemon essence brightens up the other spices.

These recipes are ones I have personally used, tweaked, tested, changed, tested again, changed, back and forth. I’m not copying and pasting. There is no monetization here. I’m only sharing recipes I love with friends who also love wings and are thinking about getting air fryers. If you’re stumbling in here, don’t worry. Yes I actually make these all the time, and I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I do.

When using the recipes, my only concern would be if your particular air fryer comes up to temp slower than mine, or has a smaller basket with less air flow. I’d hate for you to have different results because the cook times I’m using aren’t the same as what you’ll need.

I will promise you one thing; I never, ever get anything remotely close to an under-cooked wing with my times and temperatures. The nice thing about bone-in chicken wings is the bone itself acts as a heat sink. It’s difficult to overcook a chicken wing because of the bones helping absorb excess heat. I cook wings at no less than 360 F for 22 minutes or more in the air fryer and they’re perfect, but I can go up to 28 minutes, and they’re still not overdone. I’ve sometimes gone for super crispy at 400 F for 24 minutes, fighting the control panel shenanigans the whole time, and still not overcooked the wings.

I guess the point to the story is, don’t be too concerned over exact temperatures and times, as long as you’re getting fully cooked wings. If you’re in doubt, add a minute or two.

Generic blog stuff feel free to skip

I personally hate recipe blog posts where the writer shares a personal story for three pages before getting to the recipe. If I want the story, that’s great and I will read it, but sometimes I’m in a rush, looking for a recipe that sounds good with the ingredients I have on hand, and I want to scan the details (or ingredients) to see if it’s one I want to try. So in the following recipe blog posts, I’m going to give you the recipe and ingredients up front, and then if you want more details on how I prep and cook them, you can read further.

On the subject of monetization, I intentionally do not write blog posts for cash. I avoid any possible way of making money off this. I do this for fun, the love of the game if you like, whatever. It’s not a job. I have no problem with anyone that does write blog posts, recipes, or make videos as a source of income. But that ain’t me. The downside to this is, if I don’t feel inspired to write a post, then there isn’t regular content for readers. No real reason for you to come back. But hey, that’s okay if something on the blog is interesting to someone, somewhere. The reason I mention that is, I do NOT get paid to advertise or recommend anything. Ever. Nothing is recommended because I hope to get paid. It’s because it’s what I use or what I’ve seen to work.

Finally, when you see ads on this site, it’s because WordPress put them there. Sorry about that, I went with a free host years ago because I write so seldom now. I know the ads are annoying, but it’s what the host requires to keep the lights on.

Now with all that out of the way, the next posts can be all about making the wings! I think the first one will be… crispy BBQ wings. A couple different techniques that result in a damn tasty wing.

Cassie and I have been playing Final Fantasy XIV for a couple of weeks now as time allows, both of us as Lancers.

One of the things we’ve both been looking forward to was getting a mount, a rite of passage we’re already familiar with from WoW.

The normal progression for travel is running around slowly on fedex quests back and forth until you learn a zone by heart just from all the back and forth. Before you know it, you know your way around, even in a big city.

As you run, you get flight points or crystal teleporting locations, making travel between main city/village hubs a little easier, a little faster.

Finally, once you have leveled enough to know your way around pretty good they give you the chance to get a mount, trusting that the increased speed and convenience won’t prevent you from learning where things are at this point, even in new zones.

So a mount’s a pretty big deal in an MMO, right?

Something to look forward to, a removal of some tedium from game life.

While looking at some guides for new players of FFXIV, we saw that the quest chain to get your mount can begin sometime after you reach level 20 in a job. So once Cassie got to level 24 and still hadn’t seen the quest yet, she got worried she might have missed something, and looked up a guide for it on a blog somewhere.

Now, keep in mind that much like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV has been around for many, many years now. What is it, eight? Nine? Think for a moment about how much a game like WoW has changed since it’s first release, from patches to expansions to quality of life improvements. This fact may be relevant in the story to come.

So Cassie is looking at this mount guide, and she sees that once she chooses which of three Grand Companies she wants to join, she’ll be able to buy a chocobo mount. But the mount cost will be 2000 Grand Company seals, a currency that you get from doing these missions called Guildleves available in different zone hubs. There are typically 4 different missions available at a time, and once you’ve done all four in that zone, more will appear. Each of these quests is like a regular quest, escorting or killing mobs or doing something locally. Each quest can reward you with about 200 seals.

WoW has trained us well that there will inevitably be quests where you travel across the world to talk to someone, who only then will tell you that before he can help you, you’ve got to go all the way back across the continent and buy him some special ale or beer basted short ribs or something and bring them back, wasting your damn time with another fedex quest. So, to save time, guides will tell you to make sure you’ve got like 4 milk and 5 cookies or something on you before you continue on.

Cassie sees this 2000 seals cost in the guide, and once she unlocks the quests for the Grand Company, she runs out and starts grinding these seals by doing Guildleve quests over and over for a few hours.

She gets her 2100 seals, heads off to the quest giver, turns the quest in and is able to buy the chocobo mount.

The cost of the chocobo mount at the vendor is 200 seals. NOT 2000 seals like the guide said.

So this…. this was pretty harsh. There might have been a few grumpy words exchanged, some swearing, possibly someone walked away from the keyboard and watched TV the rest of the night, some low grade venting, the usual when you really studied way too much for a test that turned out to be easier than expected.

So the next day, Cassie is running around on her new mount, goes on to the very next quest in the chain… and the quest reward is 300 seals.

300 seals. She didn’t have to do even ONE of those quests she ground out for hours. Not one.

I had to hear about this, so now you do too.

In the end though, I think it was worth it to her. Not only is the mount cool, but in Final Fantasy XIV, you get a follow up quest that teaches you how to train your mount to be a combat pet alongside you. You can permanently assign your mount a class roll as either a tank, DPS or healer, and if you summon the mount using this special grass you can buy from vendors, when you dismount the mount will stay by your side and fight your enemies with you until you mount again.

Really it’s very, very cool. Of course it brings some added stress, because you have to pick a role for your mount, and what if you need a healer more than a tank? How do you decide?

Reminiscing about the grand old days of playing World of Warcraft has me realizing how much of the game I’ve forgotten. When was the last time I dropped by Onyxia’s parlor, had a nice cup of tea? Said hi to some of those dungeons up in Twilight Highlands?

The world is huge. Just, freaking huge.

It’s hard for me to grasp most of the time, because each expansion layers on more levels like a pearl and I just stay in the new layer and mill around.

There is so much to do out there between questing and exploring zones and soloing through all the dungeons and raids.

Of what is out there, how much do I remember? I did it all at least once at some point over the years, but there were long gaps between expansions where I sat at max level and, what? Did the same dungeons and raids over and over? Leveled alts? Did pet battles?

Sure, I leveled alts, but without exception those alts were played in a zone only until I out-leveled the area, then I dropped whatever the heck I was in the middle of and moved on.

When was the last time I ever just took a character from the beginning, the very beginning, and worked my way through every quest in every zone in as close to the original storytelling flow as possible?

The answer is, never.

How funny is that? I go on and on about how great Warcraft is with all this incredible content, but when it comes down to it, it’s been at least over a decade since I put any effort into playing through the game as one big story. In fact the last time I played through determined to be a completionist and see ALL the story there was to experience was in vanilla. And back then, it was because you needed to scrape and beg for those XPs, yo.

I wonder if I could do it? I wonder if it is possible for my short attention span ‘ooh shiny’ attitude to pick a character and hit each story zone, do it ALL regardless of whether I’ve out-leveled it or not, and keep doing that all the way to the end? To do World of Warcraft from start to finish as a single cohesive story?

It would take some planning to do it right, I can see that already. Anything ridiculous worth doing is worth overdoing, after all.

I’d need to pick a character, and a starting zone.

I’d need to group zones together into story arcs. The goal wouldn’t be to LEVEL so much as to take a character with every quest open and available in the game, then play through entire thematic arcs to get the complete experience. Using a fresh character prevents me from soloing every dungeon or raid I’d come to, but would ensure every quest in the game would be available as I travel through.

Suddenly I wish there was a way to reset your character quest progression to zero to do it all from the beginning. But no I don’t, the logistics on that would be terrible. They’d have to know which quests you’d already completed so they wouldn’t offer you quest rewards again, but not shut off quest rewards for quests you’d never done the first time, sorry STUPID idea, galactically awful, ugh.

To really do it right would take completing the dungeons for each zone once I had any final quests, since (at least originally) you would finish the story arcs in a zone by doing dungeons and then finally doing the associated raids. Only then would I move on to the next arc.

I’m excited at this idea. I’m freaking stoked about this idea. I’m ready to log in and tear it up right now!

I kinda sorta started to float this idea of playing through all the zones to Cassie last night, and she shot it down so fast it gave me whiplash.

Name a zone, and she had a reason, a perfectly valid reason, an EXTREMELY accurate and valid reason why playing an alt in that zone will suck all over again. She says I’m delusional, and there is a reason why as soon as we out-level a zone on an alt we move on. That once we’ve done the zone the very first time, we’ve let all the magic happy quest fairy dust out of the jar. You can’t go back and recapture that feeling.

I don’t know. I think she’s right, but at the same time damnit I want to try. One thing in my favor is I’m old. My memory is shot anyway, most of it will seem new to me if I come at it from a different direction.

The big challenge would be making sure I can clear the dungeons and raids at the right time in the process so I maintain the flow of the story as I go. I have a feeling that I’m going to need buy-in from Cassie on that one to get them done, especially on the raids.

I’m still going to try to do it. I think I’ll have to delete either my Void Elf alt or my Lightforged Draenei and start over from scratch. I’ll be level 20 at the start, but I could still go to each starting zone in turn.

Hmm, but would it be better to do a Worgen? That starting zone is only accessible to that race, and has some impressive story questing tied to it.

Oh great, now I don’t know where to start.

I guess from here, before I get bogged down by which alt class and race to play, I need to make a list of all the zones in each expansion/world, and then start tying story arcs together to nail down a sequence.

In playing the new expansion, questing through the new areas, I’ve been struck by how… how just completely wonderful the experience has been.

The areas are beautiful, lush with life, expansive and gorgeous to look upon yet still in keeping with the Warcraft that has come before.

Most of the settlements I’ve seen evoke feelings of original Warcraft city or village design, but expanded upon.

As an example, my very first impression of the new starter city, Boralus, was that it was what I thought Booty Bay was going to be like when I first journeyed there. The actual Booty Bay, when I first saw it… well, let’s just say it brings to mind a favorite old quote from the movie Roadhouse; “I thought you’d be bigger.”

Boralus is the style of Booty Bay, while being as large and bustling and alive as I could hope for a coastal trade city to be. And it’s not even that it’s that much larger than Booty Bay, but it rolls on into the rest of the massive city and dock areas smoothly, giving a sense of scale that Booty Bay never really did.

Booty Bay, for all its history and place in the world, is still a one dock, one ship town. I always felt like a ragtag band of misfits could take it over with a rusty saber and a stuffed shark. Not so Boralus!

So yes, establishing shot. I love the look and feel of the areas. I love traveling in the wilds between quest hubs and seeing the wide variety of non-aggressive wildlife to be found everywhere. It’s very nice to not have to fight every raccoon, fox, deer and eagle I see. Sometimes, I’d like to feel like I’m part of the environment with the wee pretty critters rather than El Destructo, massacre lord of skinning, killer of all he surveys. Sometimes. Depends on traffic conditions that day.

But there is another key ingredient to my enjoyment, nay my delight in adventuring in Kul Tiras.

I never see another living soul once in the game.

Call it hitting that blessed sweet spot between the vast horde racing to max level but not yet bored enough to shift to all alt leveling all the time.

I travel from town to town, righting wrongs, interacting with people along the way, finding treasure chests and piles of ore, and generally being immersed and having a great time.

Somehow, and call me an old antisocial curmudgeon if you like, but my immersion has never felt enhanced by running into <I’dSapThat> the rogue sitting on his largest mount on top of a quest giver. Or any of a thousand other annoying dipshit things people do in an anonymous world filled with other people to hopefully troll.

Cassie started playing this expansion before I did, and she says that as soon as she hit max level, boom, there were all those world quests and players phased in with her everywhere you looked, racing each other for mobs and resources. And she hadn’t finished questing in the third zone yet, so she’s now trying to deal with that while enjoying the quests and story and environments. Yay.

So looking forward to hitting max level now.

The truth for me is simple. No matter how many ‘fixes’ or modifications a developer tries to put in a massively online game to prevent trolls from trolling, it’s not the actions of the trolls that annoy me nearly as much as the forced awareness that the trolls are there in the first place, in your face, trying to be a little dick. Or just being, well, “me first me first” annoying little gits.

I don’t want to play a massively multiplayer online role-playing game anymore. I don’t like strangers in general. I don’t even like people in general. I like individuals I meet on a case by case basis. The world is a very big place, and just sharing the fact we both like World of Warcraft is no longer enough to make me include you in my band of brothers and sisters. Lots of assholes play the game too.

Case by case basis.

But, and this is the sticky part, I do love playing with friends in games. I like playing solo, but I love having an online guild of friends to chat with and be there to help or just hang out if the opportunity pops up Or to come see their awesome new transmog, pet or mount.

I like grouping up, but in small groups.

I like having every challenge in the game be possible to achieve solo, but fun in groups as well.

Basically, what I love is World of Warcraft, but if it had the Diablo 3 multiplayer system.

You know, funny thing about Diablo 3. Somehow, there is this big world in the game, and yet they don’t force all the players to share the same small cramped zone to save server space. But you can still play with friends when you want to!

You can group up with friends, drop in on their game and help them out or just roll with them killing stuff, and somehow this does not destroy the game world or shut down servers. Up to four or five, can’t remember off the top of my head, people can play together at any given time. You can even trade loot back and forth too!

Basically, Diablo 3 has the most perfect “I want to play the game and also be able to play with friends but not have to deal with dicks” system I’ve ever seen in a multiplayer game, and I dearly wish, oh HOW I wish that it could be applied to World of Warcraft.

I’m just saying.

This game would be freaking awesome if it wasn’t for all the damn people.